CHIR's "Implementing the ACA: Monitoring and Analysis of Insurance Reforms” project, supported by the Commonwealth Fund, monitors and analyzes state action to develop health insurance marketplaces, implement the new market reforms, and maintain a level playing field between health insurance markets.

With generous support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CHIR maintains the “Rapid Response” project, an ongoing series of timely issue briefs, blog posts and other analyses to address emerging issues in the implementation of the private health insurance reforms required by the ACA.

People with health insurance often pay for coverage they never use. A startup wants to shake that up. It’s a radical idea: On-demand insurance that lets customers buy some of their coverage only if and when they need it, similar to how TV viewers might rent a new release from Amazon instead of paying every month for a pricey cable package they rarely use.

The woman arrived at the University of South Florida’s navigator office in Tampa a few weeks ago with a 40-page document describing a short-term health insurance plan she was considering. She was uncomfortable with what the broker had said about the coverage, she told Jodi Ray, a health insurance navigator who helps people enroll in coverage, and she wanted help understanding it.

In recent years, places such as Memphis and Phoenix had withered into health insurance wastelands as insurers fled and premiums skyrocketed in the insurance marketplaces set up by the Affordable Care Act. But today, as in many parts of the country, these two cities are experiencing something unprecedented: Premiums are sinking and choices are sprouting.